This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: History Today
September 3, 2008
The most senior US politician to visit a Hiroshima memorial attended a ceremony there on the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in the Second World War. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, laid flowers at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park during a Group of Eight (G8) meeting. The US dropped the atomic bomb on the city on August 6th, 1945; Japan signed a formal surrender on September 2nd. After the vice-president, Pelosi’s position is next in the Presidential line of success
Source: TPM (Liberal blog)
September 2, 2008
The founder of the Alaska Independence Party -- a group that has been courted over the years by Sarah Palin, and one her husband was a member of for roughly seven years -- once professed his"hatred for the American government" and cursed the American flag as a"damn flag." The AIP founder, Joe Vogler, made the comments in 1991, in an interview that's now housed at the Oral History Program in the Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. "The fires of hell are froze
Source: Time
September 2, 2008
John McCain was clear about why he picked half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. "I found someone with an outstanding reputation for standing up to special interests and entrenched bureaucracies," he said in introducing her in Dayton, Ohio, on Friday. Palin was someone, he noted, "who reached across the aisle and asked Republicans, Democrats and independents to serve in government."
It is a powerful reinforcement of McCain's own political b
Source: McClatchy
September 2, 2008
A fire in southeast Boise, Idaho, last week revealed a remnant of the Oregon Trail that had been overgrown with sagebrush and cheat grass.
Members of an Oregon Trail preservation group learned Monday that they will be able to mark these sections that are now visible on Idaho Power Co. property. The white posts with the words "Oregon Trail" will alert hikers to the historic significance and help wildland firefighters avoid vestiges of the trail.
Source: NYT
September 1, 2008
A new test for German citizenship went into effect on Monday. The Interior Ministry has published a catalog of 300 multiple-choice questions on topics like life in a democracy, history and responsibility, and human beings and society. An additional 10 questions are related to the applicant’s German state. Applicants will be tested on 33 of the 300 questions and, to qualify for citizenship, must answer 17 correctly within an hour.
Source: Sunday Mail/ Scottish News
August 31, 2008
THE deadly buried legacy of the Nazi blitz on Scotland can be revealed today.
Our map shows how more than 1500 Second World War bombs lie beneath our
cities, towns and villages.
Shock figures show that 1677 of the Luftwaffe's unexploded bombs - known
as UXBs - remain active across Scotland.
Today the Sunday Mail pinpoints their location, from the town of Portsoy
near Inverness to Eyemouth in the south.
Source: AP
September 2, 2008
A black South Carolina pastor and his church claim they own the building that houses a so-called Klan museum and store where KKK robes and T-shirts emblazoned with racial slurs are sold, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The Rev. David Kennedy said the property was transferred in 1997 to his Laurens County church by a Klansman who was fighting with others inside the hate group. A clause in the deed entitles John Howard, a man who runs the store, to operate his business in the bu
Source: Telegraph
September 2, 2008
A senior judge has begun the lengthy process of compiling a list of all the victims of the Spanish Civil War and the ensuing dictatorship of General Francisco Franco in a move that could lead to compensation for their families.
High Court Judge Balthasar Garzon has ordered governmental and religious authorities across Spain to unearth information about those killed at the hands of Franco's fascist forces following his military uprising in July 1936.
He hopes to draw up
Source: NYT
September 1, 2008
Forty years ago this summer, construction workers began erecting the steel framework of the World Trade Center. On Tuesday, a new generation of them will begin erecting the steel to frame its memorial.
Columns and beams from Owen Steel Company’s job No. 7-06 — the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center — started arriving at ground zero last Thursday on flatbed trailers. They are the first of more than 8,000 tons of steel that will be shipped to Lower Man
Source: BBC
September 2, 2008
Amateur film footage featuring Marilyn Monroe on the set of the 1959 movie Some Like It Hot is being put up for auction in Australia.
The two-and-a-half minute 8mm colour film was taken by a US naval officer who was invited to the movie set after Monroe visited his base in San Diego.
Still in its original Kodak box, the film was passed on to his daughter who lives in Melbourne, Australia.
The footage features Monroe, co-star Tony Curtis and director Bill
Source: History Today
September 2, 2008
The oldest surviving English roll of arms, dating from the reign of King Edward I, has been acquired by the British Library. The Dering Roll dates from c.1270-1280 and contains 324 coats of arms, a quarter of the English baronage of the period. Sold at a Sotheby’s auction in December 2007 for £192,500, the Culture Minister Margaret Hodge then placed a temporary export bar on the medieval manuscript. The British Library, with funding from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, The Art Fund, Friends
Source: Telegraph
September 1, 2008
A former Israeli spy has described how an operation to capture the 'Angel of Death' Josef Mengele in Argentina had to be called off to prevent the escape of Adolf Eichmann.
Israeli agents were taken off Mengele's trail in 1960 so that agents of the foreign intelligence service Mossad could focus their efforts on detaining Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust.
With the Eichmann operation going smoothly allowing agents to smuggle the senior Nazi back to
Source: Telegraph
August 31, 2008
Banners and bunting for the Paralympics have replaced those of the Olympics on Beijing's streets, and the first of the 4,200 disabled athletes who will compete in the Games have started arriving.
Yet with less than a week to go before they open, China's vast and growing army of disabled citizens has little cause to celebrate.
Hosting the Paralympics has been talked up as an opportunity to challenge the deep-seated prejudice which the disabled face in China, just as the
Source: CNN
September 1, 2008
Defying police presence and a thunderous downpour, dozens of Greek pagans huddled near the Parthenon in Athens on Sunday, holding a protest prayer for a museum being built at the foot of the sacred site.
The ceremony, attended by scores of curious onlookers, was performed amid the ruins of the 2,500-year-old Parthenon. The ancient Greek religion was outlawed by the Roman empire in the fourth century.
Dressed in crisp white apparel, the pagans gathered before the e
Source: Civil War News
September 8, 2008
FAIRFAX, Va. — Ox Hill Battlefield Park will be dedicated on Sept. 1, the
146th anniversary of the 1862 battle where Union Gens. Philip Kearny and
Isaac Stevens died.
The new 5-acre county park is a tribute to persistence and efforts over
more than 20 years to save something of the battlefield (also known as
Chantilly), which lies under and surrounded by suburban Washington
development — highways, malls, townhouses and office buildings.
Opening ceremonies at the park, at 4134
Source: Telegraph
August 31, 2008
The brother of Lord Haw-Haw, the notorious Second World War propagandist, was interned for four years by the British government even though the security services believed he was innocent of any crime and posed no danger to the country....
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Edwin Quentin Joyce, a member of the National Socialist League, was interned in 1939 shortly after the outbreak of war and his brother William’s escape to Germany.
The security services became suspicious of his links to a su
Source: NYT
September 1, 2008
IN the 24 hours before the McCain campaign put the finishing touches on its surprise announcement Friday that Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska would be the Republican vice presidential candidate, one Wikipedia user was putting the finishing touches on her biography on the site.
Beginning at 2 a.m Eastern time on Thursday, a Wikipedia user with the name YoungTrigg began an overhaul of the article, adding compelling stories about her upbringing, including that “she earned the nickname ‘Sara
Source: Telegraph
August 31, 2008
Melita Norwood, the "granny spy" who passed Britain's nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, helped speed up Stalin's atomic bomb programme by five years, according to a controversial new biography.
Norwood, a committed Communist who began spying for Moscow in the 1930s, handed over technical information which provided Russian scientists with a crucial breakthrough.
Her contribution allowed them to overcome problems, which blocked the development of their nuclea
Source: Telegraph
September 1, 2008
The traditional bearskin helmets worn by guardsmen on duty at Buckingham Palace could disappear after almost 200 years under plans being considered by the Government.
Baroness Taylor, the minister for defence procurement, will meet representatives from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) this week to discuss the idea of having the 18-inch helmets, worn by Guards regiments on ceremonial duty at the royal residence, made from synthetical materials.
The
Source: Independent
September 1, 2008
Four months before he disappears into the Texas sunset, Bush is the least loved president of modern times. He will step down with the US embroiled in two unpopular wars, up to its eyes in debt, its economy sliding into recession, its moral standing in the world deeply damaged.
Not even Harry Truman during the worst of the Korean war, or Richard Nixon as he sank in the morass of Watergate, matched Bush's current disapproval rating of 70 per cent. As early as midway through his second
